COLUMBUS, Ohio - If, at the end of the season, the Wild are preparing for their first playoff series since 2007-08, this one won't matter so much. It will just be one data point in a set of 82, another moving average on the chart of a team whose stock seems prone to big swings.

But if they're sitting at home in April? Oh, how Tuesday night's 3-1 loss to the Columbus Blue Jackets will hurt.

The Wild came into the game looking as if they had rediscovered a blueprint for winning through a 3-1-1 stretch that included seven points against teams chasing them for the final playoff spot in the Western Conference. They left it having missed a chance to beat the worst team in the league, and they reverted to some of the problems they mostly seemed to have fixed.

Columbus outshot Minnesota 14-7 in the first period, playing with an edge not typical of a last-place team. The Wild tied the score 1-1 late in the first period on Nate Prosser's first career goal, but they never were able to match the Blue Jackets' energy. And their defensemen, hurt by an ineffective forecheck most of the night, took six of the penalties that gave Columbus its seven power plays. Nick Schultz took four of those penalties by himself.

"It's tough to get energized when you've got your momentum going one way, you turn the puck over and you've got to chase back," forward Cal Clutterbuck said. "I think we've been feeding off the energy from playing our game, creating chances, a structured forecheck, good dumps (of the puck), stuff like that.

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The Wild had little of that and spent much of the first and third periods either trying to clear the puck from their zone or killing penalties. When they did get a power play, the reconstructed unit did little, managing only three shots on three power plays.

That's been a problem for the Wild all season, but Prosser scored his goal in a 5-on-5 situation by doing what coach Mike Yeo has been asking from the power play.

The Columbus Blue Jackets' Ryan Russell (25) carries the puck up ice while followed by the Minnesota Wild's Darroll Powe (14) in the first period at Nationwide Arena in Columbus, Ohio, on February 7, 2012. (Brooke LaValley/Columbus Dispatch/MCT)

When Justin Falk's pass missed him, he let it come back to him off the boards, took a big windup and rifled a slap shot through screens from Matt Cullen and Clutterbuck.

It was the type of sequence that should form the backbone of Minnesota's power play - and it was the type of goal that should be harder to score at even strength. But when the Wild drew penalties, they still weren't able to turn them into anything.

"We each have to have that mentality a little bit more - getting pucks to the middle of the ice," Prosser said. "My shot had eyes. It just got through a bunch of screens. That's what happens - it's either going to go in the net or be laying there for a rebound."

Minnesota has scored one goal in each of its past three games, and while that was good enough to win against Colorado and send Saturday's game against Dallas to overtime, it's not going to be enough to win on a regular basis.

And after losing to the worst team in the league, the Wild now get to try to put things back together against the one with the second-best mark in the Western Conference. Vancouver comes to Xcel Energy Center on Thursday night, kicking off a run of 18 home games in the final 29 contests of the season.

That won't come with any assurance of victory, though. Just as there's no guarantee when the Wild come into a game against a last-place team, seemingly full of momentum.

"There was too much complacency in our game," Yeo said. "We need desperation every shift, by every guy, and they had more than us tonight."